Sunday, November 14, 2010

As you can see by the title, this has been a week on the planes. I came back from Rome on Monday and Wednesday I flew out to California to visit with the provincial of St. Joseph Cupertino Province.

This is a rather small province, just over 50 members. It goes from Los Angeles to San Francisco and out to Reno. Their friars are most involved in parish ministry, although a number of them do have singular apostolates.

Fr. Chris Deitz is their provincial. He is beginning his third term. He resides at Arroyo Grande which is near Pismo Beach.

The province has taken on responsibility for our new mission in Vietnam. We have a number of friars who were born in Vietnam living in California, Australia and Japan. A few of them have founded a mission in Vietnam and Fr. Chris will be visiting them shortly to help them in their early growing pains. It appears as if there are many young men who would like to join out community there. One of the friars at the friary where I was staying, Castro Valley, will be heading out there for a three month trial in a couple of months. Having worked with the refounding of the province in Romania, I find this very exciting.

The travel back and forth has left me quite jet lagged. I am not all that good on that, and at times it takes me a week to adjust. I just do what I can and when I need a rest, I do that.

This has been a good week for articles for the Messenger Magazine and daily reflections for the internet site. I finished them up to Christmas eve. It is good to be so far ahead.

In terms of books, I listened to Justice Denied by J.A. Jance. He is quite popular lately. This book speaks of a series of murders by a vigilante. She has an informant in the DNA lab and gives her information about unsolved rapes, and she then dresses in a nuns habit and executes them. The action and the character development which quite good.

A second book is Fortunate Son by Walter Mosley. This is the story of two boys, one white and one black, who become brothers through a relationship of one's father and the other's mother. When the mother dies, it all falls apart. There are some masterful sections and incredible insights, but one thing really bothered me. Twice there are instances where people in the book have sex with underage children. In both cases, the development was unnecessary and I just don't know why the author would include it and glamorize it.

A third book was The Curve of the World by Marcus Stevens. This is about a jet that crash lands in the Congo during civil war. One man runs into the jungle to escape what he is sure will be a massacre. We hear of his struggle to survive, and also of his wife who travels there with her son who is blind to try to find him. I thought that this is one of the best books I have listened to in years. Many of the insights into intercultural situations rang true from what I have observed.

This week my trips will not be quite so far - Chicago, South Bend, Carey, Ohio and Buffalo.